


In My Room, I Want You Here (And Now I Wanna Be Your Dog)

by Gorillaz (Kyun)



Series: X [1]
Category: Gorillaz
Genre: Album: Plastic Beach (Gorillaz), Bathing/Washing, But whatever, Canon-Typical Violence, Collars, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, Kidnapping, M/M, Mild Language, Stockholm Syndrome, Transgender!2D, bon appétit, lot of saucy animal symbolism, vaguely implied that 2D tops
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-06
Updated: 2021-01-06
Packaged: 2021-03-11 04:15:47
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28259070
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Kyun/pseuds/Gorillaz
Summary: The dog collar around his neck made animalism ironic, but Murdoc always called the basement “2D’s room” and Stu spent all of his time thinking about 2D’s room, sleeping in 2D’s room, touching whatever was in 2D's room: everything but a clock perhaps.Dog-fighting, territoriality, lust, and domestication. Two men nip at each other's heels time and again. (R&R)
Relationships: Murdoc Niccals/Stuart "2D" Pot
Series: X [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2097855
Kudos: 14





	In My Room, I Want You Here (And Now I Wanna Be Your Dog)

**Author's Note:**

> Title from famous 1969 rock song "I Wanna Be Your Dog"
> 
> R&R (Read and review)

Stu had stopped crying and fighting after two months. He only knew because his hair had grown. Every half of an inch was a month and two months, sixty days and, in sixty days, Stu had developed territoriality. The dog collar around his neck made animalism ironic, but Murdoc always called the basement “2D’s room” and Stu spent all of his time thinking about 2D’s room, sleeping in 2D’s room, touching whatever was in 2D's room: everything but a clock perhaps.

Being underground was like sleeping in a cupboard: dark, big enough for a single bed, made comfortable only by a few blankets, but in a way “just for him." His memories were now all of the long expense in the darkness and of Murdoc... Murdoc... Stu knows that he cannot comprehend Murdoc and so doesn’t try, would rather die, he doesn’t say, put his hand on metallic walls and allow thoughts to bleed like saltwater.

Before Murdoc had given him the collar, Stu had bitten him in the first weeks when he was panicking. "You're just a dumb animal," Murdoc had said, voice lowered and biting and sharp and cruel, "a horrible, mangy cunt, aren't you?" Stu had almost flinched, objected then, when Murdoc had snatched his wrist, but he had ignored him, bending and curving and drawing himself up like he always did, like he wanted Stu to look at him, _touch himself at night thinking about them grinding, crotch-to-crotch._ Must be daft...

In the darkness though, he wished that Murdoc had said more, made being a dog sound appealing, easier than being a man at least. In the first days, with the struggling and fighting, Murdoc creeped outwards from the shadows, hissing and snapping and swiping and kicking, more feral than ever. Stu’s purpose was to contradict everything that Murdoc said when he was not begging or lying on the floor covered in his acid reflux. Murdoc’s had been to torture Stu with false sweetness and threats of violence; Stu keened even thinking of the streaks of pain. Otherwise, he was alone in darkness. Now, the chain was a part of the environment, which Murdoc never talked about.

The less that Stu fought back, the less that Murdoc fought. Most days were spent looking bored or wretched, knees drawn upwards and cheek on his knuckles while he looked outside of the window. Murdoc only ever made cursory, necessary conversation with him. But, today, Stu hoped that Murdoc would come. His head was bent beneath his hunched shoulders, limbs sprawled, hands and feet grabbing and ungrabbing the weathered cotton-and-silk throw, hugging the blanket between himself. Murdoc had not packed testosterone supplements. He knew that his body would respond. _But, so soon..._ He sunk limp, weary, and watery-eyed now, burying his face further downwards.

“Hey," Murdoc said. "You OK? Fall asleep again?" He was looking downwards but not like the first weeks. Stu almost expected him to be shadowed by his fringe: his sharp, yellow teeth, visible only when he sneered mockingly. Now, he was frowning slightly like Stu was a disorderly roommate that he found exhausting, but his eyes, passively wondering, and his voice, speaking almost like he was only talking to himself: "Usually, sleeping helps the headaches." 

Stu supposed that may have been because he was dragging the pillow and due to the whimpering, the high and nasally whining that sounded like, "No, actually" because the heartache, not the headache, the loneliness, not the — 

He was shaken out of his thoughts by a hand on his shoulder: surprisingly gentle. “Come on, sit up for a second," Murdoc said. "Make sure that you’re comfortable.” Stu sat up when Murdoc said so, leaned forward when Murdoc said so, was good and still when he said so, allowed Murdoc to prepare his neck, and when Murdoc drew his fingers through the hair above his neck _oh, oh, that felt_ _nice, safe,_ pretended not to recognise Murdoc's face.

Stu obeyed even when Murdoc had to put his hand on Stuart's back to stop him from nosediving into the blankets again. _Why are you doing this?_ Lonely, bleeding, help...

“I’ve got you, calm down,” Murdoc said, rubbing his back, when he began exhaling heavily, taking away all of the tension.

“I’m s-sorry, I’ll stay still. I'll listen. Please, I didn't mean—" _What are you doing, you stupid git?_

“Shhh, I know. Lower your voice, 2D. All is forgiven. I'm going to take this off for a bit," Murdoc said, touching the collar. "Only a bit more."

He wanted to say, “No,” wanted to tell Murdoc, “You don’t have to do anything like that,” push him away, say to Murdoc that he could lay like a shackled dog, fine. Stu hated being trapped, manipulated, but Murdoc was never anything but honest, never pretended that he was not owned here, never pretended that he was behaving normally towards Stu, never expected too much from him, never gave him any responsibilities or expectations, never made him feel bad for wasting away in the basement or for being nasty and degenerate and cruel, never... 

Never expected Stu to be more than a dog. Never made him feel bad for fighting like a dog, laying like a dog. Provoked him just like he wanted. _"I think that you're just a dumb animal."_

Stu leaned backwards. Murdoc enveloped him, so he laid against him when he tugged off his clothes. Felt like the type of intimacy that they had when they play-fought... before Plastic Beach, in the days that Stu cannot go back to.

The next moment, Stu was laying in warm, shallow water and Murdoc, soaking his hair. Stu lifted his head. "Murdoc?"

"Stay down."

"What are you doing?"

"I'm cutting your hair for you."

"I'm naked."

"Stay down. This wouldn't have to happen if you did it. Bloody hell. If I didn't make you eat, you'd be in the choir eternal."

Murdoc poured words like that into the silence: about how 2D looked better, less dead, felt warmer, how the painkillers gave him a slight fever that would go down, how he prepared Stu's medicine when he was comatose. Murdoc walked through everything, brought out and set in place again, seemed to be talking and moving more for himself, placed his hand on his back to comfort him, which felt more like loss than comfort.

Comfort was walking down the same street every day, wearing the same clothes every day, waking up in the same bed every day.

Living with Murdoc had not been comforting in a long time.

Whether Murdoc knew or not, impossible to understand.

Stu listened as sweet things were crooned in his ear, drowned out by low, suggestive noises that were probably less funny than Murdoc thought. Murdoc mocked him with disgustingly sentimental stories about all of the embarrassing things that he did when he was comatose, how dependent and useless he still was, how nice and helpful and generous and _kind_ Murdoc was for taking care. Seemed to take some sort of sick pleasure from seeing Stu frown disinterestedly.

"Seem most like yourself when you've lost the plot like some knobhead," Stu said finally, but the venom was not there beneath the sinking, tired, doll-like feeling between the limbs and the feeling of water pouring.

"Must have, gagging for a cheeky bastard like you," Murdoc muttered low in his throat behind his ear.

"Couldn't have left me in Crawley then?" Stuart drawled. "Course not. You'd be gutted if you didn't have someone to watch you piss about."

"Suppose that only little Stuart is knackered from working on the album," Murdoc said but his voice, kind like he knew how much pain he was in, only half-joking. "Who am I kidding? _I'm_ the mangy dog that _you_ were saintly enough to grace with your presence. Cheers, yeah?"

It shouldn't have, but the words hit in the heat of pain, soreness, tenderness, cabin fever, and, when tremors moved down his body, Stu's breath and heart sped up. He restrained with shallow breaths and watched his body, limp. Murdoc looked at him out of the corner of his eye, moving his hands to bracket his sides from behind while the water drained, and Stu felt the same disgusting urge: to hold, grab on, cling. He knotted his fingers together like twisting the blanket that he had known for sixty days.

Settled on sinking his teeth gently into Murdoc's arm. Murdoc's eyes grew dark and heavy: rumination. Through some manoeuvre of Machiavellian strength—a dodgy, predatory, promising type, Stuart figured—he stayed motionless but for the soft, shushing sound hissing between his teeth. Stuart did not whine in relief and appreciation, never would, would rather die, he doesn't say, when Murdoc swallowed him, allowed him to disappear, within his eyes.

Instead, Murdoc watched the water drain, then let him ignore the feeling that screamed at him that everything was wrong and twisted, let him feel warmth and be surrounded by blankets, pulled him up and outwards to rest comfortably beside him, hugged against the heat of his chest. Stuart was not crying, would never. _Perfectly sane, but... Lonely, bleeding, help..._ Vaguely heard Murdoc telling him that he knew, that he did not have to say anything to him, they were finished, he could sleep. _Knew...?_

Stuart felt a hot flush run down through his body from his neck and shoulders, wanted to say, _"Fucking hell, why do you torture me, you bloody cunt?"_ Wanted to sink his teeth into Murdoc's neck like an animal. _He would let you; he likes that._ The heat became unbearable and caught within his chest. Finally, he settled on, "Please," quiet like breath on wind. Murdoc brought his cold hands up to his pecs, smoothed down the burning within him. How...?

"Don't leave," Stuart said. "Stay." The word felt pathetic and lonely and existential. How many animals had felt that emotion? _Stay, don't go, be here, don't leave me._

_I'm lonely, I need someone, I can't survive on my own, I'm a pack animal, love me, take care of me, say nice things to me, make me feel belonging, make me feel acceptance, make me feel a part of the group. Stay here. It's so lonely, I need someone._

Murdoc's voice vibrated low within his throat: a million pop songs, like every Elvis Presley vinyl record that he had ever played, like the medicine and alcohol that slid down his throat and warmed his gut, like his mother's womb. In the radio silence, he spoke meekly, breath on wind.

"Where else would I be?" 

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you for reading. This didn't turn out in any way like what I wanted. R&R (Read and review). Cheers.


End file.
